The Toll (Arc of a Scythe #3) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,124

some even prostrating themselves on the forest floor. All of them but one. Their curate—who was now quaking with fury. He opened his hollow mouth to intone, but it was a weak, miserable sound. He was alone. No one joined him. Still, he continued until his breath failed him.

And when silence fell, Greyson turned to Mendoza, speaking loud enough for everyone to hear what came next for them.

“You will inject them all with fresh nanites, so that their tongues may grow back, and this reign of terror can end.”

“Yes, Your Sonority,” said Mendoza.

Then Greyson approached the curate. He thought the man might strike out at him. Greyson almost hoped that he would. But he didn’t.

“You’re done,” Greyson said in disgust. Then he turned to Scythe Morrison and said two, simple words that he never thought he’d hear himself say.

“Glean him.”

Without hesitation Scythe Morrison grabbed the curate with both hands, turned his head one way, his body another, and executed him.

* * *

“Tell me I was wrong!” Greyson paced the tent they had set up for him in the forest, unsettled in a way he had never been unsettled before.

“Why should I tell you that?” the Thunderhead asked, calm as calm could be.

“Because if it was wrong to order that man gleaned, I need to know!”

Greyson could still hear the sound of the man’s neck snapping. It was the most horrible thing that he had ever heard. And yet he liked it. Seeing that monstrous curate die was far too satisfying for comfort. Is this what those new-order scythes felt? A primal, predatory lust for the crushing of life? He wanted no part of that feeling, yet here it was.

“I cannot speak on the subject of death; it is not in my domain—you know this, Greyson.”

“I don’t care!”

“You’re being rather irrational.”

“You can’t say anything about death, but I know you can talk about right and wrong! So was it wrong to have given Morrison that order?”

“Only you can know that.”

“You’re supposed to be directing me! Helping me to help you make a better world!”

“And you are,” said the Thunderhead. “But you’re not infallible. Only I am infallible. So, if you’re asking me if it’s possible for you to make errors in judgment, the answer is yes. You make errors all the time… as does every other human being who has ever lived. Error is an intrinsic part of the human condition—and it is something I deeply love about humankind.”

“You’re not helping me!”

“I charged you with unifying the Tonists so that they could be more useful to the world. I can only speak to your progress in the task, not judge your methodology.”

Enough. Greyson ripped his earpiece off. He was about to throw it in anger, but then he heard, faint and tinny, the Thunderhead’s voice still speaking through it.

“You are a terrible person,” the Thunderhead said. “You are a wonderful person.”

“Well, which is it?” Greyson demanded.

And the response, as faint as faint could be, came back to him—not as an answer, but as another question.

“Why can’t you see that the answer is both?”

* * *

That evening, Greyson put back on his vestments and prepared to address the Tonists. To grant them forgiveness. He had done this many times before, but no sibilant Tonists he faced had ever done something as heinous as these.

“I don’t want to forgive them,” he told Mendoza before he went out.

“Granting them absolution brings them into the fold,” Mendoza said. “It serves our needs. And besides,” he added, “it’s not Greyson Tolliver forgiving them, it’s the Toll. Which means your personal feelings shouldn’t even come into play.”

When Greyson put his earpiece back in, he asked the Thunderhead if Mendoza was right. Did it want Greyson to forgive them? Or, more to the point, did the Thunderhead forgive them? Was it so magnanimous that it could even excuse their curate?

“Ah,” the Thunderhead said sadly. “That poor man…”

“Poor man? That monster doesn’t deserve your sympathy.”

“You didn’t know him as I did. As with all others, I watched him from birth. I saw the forces in his life that shaped him, turning him into the bitter, misguided, self-righteous man he became. Thus, I mourn his gleaning just as I mourn all others.”

“I could never be as forgiving as you,” Greyson said.

“You misunderstand; I don’t forgive him—I merely understand him.”

“Well, then,” Greyson said, still a bit belligerent from their earlier conversation, “you’re not a god, are you? Because a god forgives.”

“I never claimed to be a god,” the Thunderhead responded. “I